


Rebirth

by White Aster (white_aster)



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Hope, M/M, Novelization, Post-Canon, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megatron and the Decepticons return to Cybertron to rebuild and find more hope than they expected. (Megatron, Metroplex, some Megatron/OP if you squint. Based off the ending of the NOVEL VERSION of Dark of the Moon).</p>
<p>Written for the_fic_trader comm on Dreamwidth's TF Gift Exchange 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



**Title:** Rebirth  
 **Recipient:** Thousanth **Creator:** White Aster **Continuity:** Movieverse (novelization)  
 **Pairing/Characters:** Megatron, Metroplex, Optimus Prime, implied Megatron/Optimus Prime  
 **Rating/Category:** G  
 **Word Count:** 5195  
 **Prompt:** Request was for (among other possibilities) Metroplex, Megatron, and Optimus, with a bit of canon divergence for flavor.  
 **Spoilers:** Spoilers for the Dark of the Moon novelization ending.  
 **Notes/Warnings:** This story is set in a complicated place: in the canon niche that is the movieverse's novelization of Dark of the Moon. At the end of that novel, Megatron and Prime teamed up to fight and kill Sentinel, and then in the end Megatron, weary of war and destruction, sued Optimus for peace. Exactly what he said is the "conversation" that is remembered later in this fic. Megatron then leaves, ostensibly to keep his word. This story is what happens, maybe 250 years after the end of that scene.

 

::Lord Megatron.::

Three vorn since the end of the war. Three vorn since he'd last fought for anything but sparring's sake. 2.7 vorn since, even, the last assassination attempt, and still he woke battle-ready, claws locked and energon pumping through his lines. 

Also, Megatron, Lord High Protector of Cybertron, noted, barely three breem since he'd initiated recharge. 

Megatron sighed. If it were anyone but Thundercracker, he would have ignored it. If it were anyone but Thundercracker, it would have rerouted to not wake him at all. He swung his pedes off the berth to the floor and eased his helm back to stretch linkages that had stiffened in sleep. ::What is it, Thundercracker?::

The response carried an uncharacteristic amount of hesitation. ::Sir, the Constructicons have discovered something unexpected in the infrastructure of Section 1139. They're requesting your presence before they continue.::

Megatron terminated a response about how he was not an engineer before he even sent it. Thundercracker could be overly cautious, but he knew better than to wake Megatron in the middle of his recharge for trivialities. ::What, exactly?::

::A spark chamber.::

Megatron froze in the middle of stretching the overtight cables in his back. He double-checked his files, cross-checking their current reconstruction map with his last map of pre-Exodus Cybertron. ::...is it lit?::

Thundercracker's response was caged in glyphs for uncertainty. ::Possibly.::

He was on his feet and striding out the door in the next nanoklik. ::On my way. Disturb NOTHING.::

::Understood, sir.::

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Section 1139 was a chunk of the former Iacon border. It had seen a good amount of fighting at the beginning of the war, but it was a craggy, difficult piece of ground, surrounded on three sides by a tributary of the Rust Sea that had, at some point in the fighting, been diverted elsewhere. The receding of the Sea had left the place on a slight cliff, easily approachable by ground on only one side. Still, it was within reasonable distance of several small but salvageable deposits of cybertronium, enthium, and duryllium, and its infrastructure was, itself, rich in materials. Megatron had ordered it to be refitted as an outpost.

Megatron thought of the promontory's history as he swept through the atmosphere over Iacon. The facility had quite literally been fought over as no other piece of ground on Cybertron. It had been a relief...a mercy, really, when a combination of battle damagef and energy starvation had finally taken its toll.

And yet, Megatron thought as he landed, here he was. 

The dim watery light of Nota-45 (a white dwarf that they stood a middling chance of actually falling into orbit around in 80,000 vorn or so) was rising as Megatron strode past the piles of salvaged materials. The salvage had begun, as evidenced by the piles of thick duryllium plating that had been cut into neat sections. The workers stood around idle, however, no doubt on Thundercracker's order.

His second in command stood outside the main building's main entrance, flanked by Scavenger and Scrapper. The seeker's blunt wings were canted high in excitement or perhaps simple apprehension. It was a pose more characteristic of Thundercracker's dead wingmate than the stoic seeker himself.

"Status."

Thundercracker's salute was crisp and automatic (definitely NOT reminiscent of his dead wingmate), his reply swift. "No change, sir. Hook is inside--" his optics slid to the lingering and obviously curious workers "--completing his analysis."

"Show me."

As expected, the path in was not short or direct. Thundercracker led Megatron through halls still and silent, past entire sections long abandoned: military checkpoints, hallways scarred by weaponsfire, ransacked offices and residential quarters, shops with shelves long-swept bare of anything of value. The atmosphere was heavy, though Megatron dismissed the weight on his spark as a flight of fancy. 

Thundercracker eventually led Megatron into the maintenance tunnels, then through smaller and smaller passages, his wings transformed tight against his back. Megatron himself moved carefully, his bulk a hindrance in passages meant for smaller, lither mecha. The path never became impassable, however, and eventually they emerged in a larger antechamber before a heavy door. Hook stood before it, turning as Megatron and the Seeker emerged. "Lord Megatron."

"Hook. What have you found?" Megatron's optics scanned the tightly-shut blast doors.

The Constructicon's glyphs were clipped and precise, dense with engineering cant. "According to the last known specifications, the spark chamber is beyond this door, my lord. The infrastructure is degraded, but...there are power fluctuations from within. Minute. But cycling."

"And the processors?" It was less than useful for such a mech to be alive but insensible or insane.

"Intact, my lord, as much as I can tell." Hook's reply turned sharp with his usual mix of harried and slightly annoyed glyphs. "I am far from an expert on cityformer cyberbiology, however. Or programming."

"Understood." Megatron's optics crawled over the ceiling bare handspans over the top of his helm. The cables and conduits were fuzzy with rust and corrosion. "What of the energon infrastructure?" 

"Mostly intact," Hook replied. "The entire system has only been raised to emergency mode at this point. The engagement switches for full power-up should be in there." He gestured to the blast doors behind him.

Megatron's optics narrowed in thought, calculating. "Is there enough energon in the tanks to fully power the system?"

Hook looked at him inscrutably for a long moment, long enough that the Lord High Protector raised an orbital ridge at him expectantly. "Permission to speak freely, my Lord?" Hook asked.

Hook did not often ASK before tearing a ranking mech a new exhaust. Perhaps being outside his medbay had the Constructicon out of his comfort zone. "Granted."

"There's enough in his tanks to rouse him, if he's still capable of it, but what good will it do?" Hook's glyphs were edged with _shortage_ and _scarcity/starvation_. It was well-known that Cybertron's surface was just as resource-poor as when they'd left it millions of vorn ago, the energon pools dry and cracked, the surface veins scraped to bare metal. "He'll take more energon per day than twenty mecha, even just to keep him online with most of his structure unpowered. Fully powering him will take a million kiliquats per day, and I can't even calculate how much it will take him to actually transform." Hook stared hard at the Decepticon leader. "If you cannot guarantee a steady supply of energon for him, it would be kinder to leave him offline. Sir."

Megatron held the Constructicon's gaze for an equally long moment. "Noted. Open the doors."

Hook's visor dimmed in consternation, but he turned, transmitting a code to the flickering panel beside the blast doors. "On your helm be it," Hook grumbled, stomping back down the way they came, the growl of his engines echoing off the service tunnel's close walls. 

Behind him, whatever cycle he had initiated finished, and the blast doors began to open, slowly.

Megatron could feel Thundercracker's gaze on him. "Is this wise, sir?" the seeker asked. "Even if we could fuel him, we have no idea if he will even be reasonable. Or sane."

Megatron's optics remained on the slowly inching doors. "Have you read Hardrock's report, Thundercracker?"

"...yes. Does it...." Thundercracker hesitated, his glyphs caged in uncertainty, then the bare, truncated glyphs for _paradox/disbelief_. "I'm no engineer. Does it mean what I think it means?"

"Ask the Constructicons. And contact Hardrock and arrange a visit. I wish to see his discovery for myself." Megatron said, as the doors finally opened wide enough to admit him.

He stepped forward into a cavernous room barely lit. The emergency lighting reached here as well, but in widely-spaced intervals, leaving pools of weak light surrounded by a thrumming darkness. An emptiness that was not...quite empty. 

A light shone in the center of the room. As he walked toward it, Megatron at first thought that it looked perfectly healthy, as sparks went. Then the size of the containment crystal sketched itself out of the darkness, and he realized the scale involved. The spark was a tenth of the size of its crystal and dimmer than he would have expected. Had Megatron seen a proportionally weak spark in an enemy's crystal, he would have considered the battle done and that mecha's death only a matter of time.

_And yet,_ Megatron thought as he stopped by a podium set well-back from the spark crystal, _you still live._

Something in the air changed, minutely. Something vibrating through the floor under his pedes. Something just at the edge of his EM sensors. Idly, Megatron wondered what Optimus would have been able to sense, standing in a cityformer's spark chamber. 

The podium contained a large pullswitch, helpfully labeled with more engineering terminology and warnings than Megatron needed. It reminded the reader that only those of Level 8 clearance or higher were authorized to operate it.

Megatron searched his memorybanks for a long moment, trying to remember hearing of the titan's fate. He couldn't remember being briefed on it. The cityformer was listed as assumed deactivated, an uncertainty ticked off, a resource lost to both factions, but the details of it were lost. Megatron only remembered that the cityformer had been in Autobot hands at the time. 

The switch was down, the system off, the giant in stasis. Evidently the last commander had at least given his soldier that much mercy, rather than abandoning him to starve into stasis awake and aware.

Megatron grasped the switch, lifting it up, pushing it away. It moved grudgingly, resisting even Megatron's great strength for a moment before gummed lubricant parted and metal slid past metal. It settled into the 'on' position with a clank.

For a long klik, nothing happened, and Megatron wondered if it had been too long, if the energon pumps no longer functioned, if the energon lines between tank and inner machinery had rusted away. Then the hum around him became the whine of capacitors charging, and the floor shuddered beneath his pedes. The very atmosphere vibrated as the walls containing it trembled with the growl of dormant machinery powering to life.

The spark within the spark chamber flickered, flinched, then FLARED with the light of a thousand suns. 

Megatron threw up his arm to shield optics already useless in the sudden light as the spark in front of him doubled, trebled, growing until it filled its crystal to bursting with power. When Megatron's optics adjusted, he saw that the walls he hadn't been able to see in the dark actually contained monitors, their panels flicking to life one at a time, displaying status screens, boot-up lists, error messages, and diagnostic progress bars.

Megatron settled back on his pedes, feeling the last cityformer's resurrection vibrating up his struts. "Metroplex," he said to the massive spark now lighting the room. "Awaken. Do you know me?"

Feedback glitched through the room's speakers, lowering from a screech to a low baritone that resonated through the entire structure. 

"MEGATRON. I KNOW YOU."

Well, that simplified things. "I-"

He got nothing more than that out before the cityformer overrode him with sheer volume. "LET ME DIE, LORD PROTECTOR. I HAVE NO DESIRE TO AWAKEN...ONLY TO STARVE."

Megatron huffed in irritation. "You shall not starve, Metroplex."

"WILL I NOT? DO YOU NEED MY AID SO BADLY THAT YOU WILL STARVE YOUR TROOPS FOR IT? HOW CRUEL, LORD HIGH PROTECTOR." Metroplex's glyphs were caged with a dozen kinds of pain. "CYBERTRON...IS DEAD. YOUR WAR HAS KILLED IT. LET ME DIE WITH IT."

"So says the mech who has just awoken after vorns in stasis. And no."

"NO?"

"No." The podium also contained an instrument panel and a standard datajack. Most likely it was meant to be used by engineers in maintaining the titan's infrastructure and machine coding. Megatron connected to it and simply uploaded a video file. A monitor to the side flickered to life.

The visible quality was terrible, taken as it was thousands of mechanometers under the surface by the light of whatever floodlights Hardrock carried on his frame. Powerful though they were, they only spotlighted isolated patches: a crystal of raw energon hanging from a ceiling, the crystal blue like the Earthen sky but so much purer, a steady trickle of energon flowing down its translucent length. A pool of energon beneath it, scale lost until Hardrock's video pulled back and switched to thermoscan.

The crystal was as large as Megatron was tall. It was one of hundreds hanging in a line across the ceiling of the cavern, the line stretching as far as the optic could sense. The trickles of energon dripped down each of them at a rate of roughly 50 kiliquats per millicycle. The pool beneath was a great, snaking river, glassy and slow-moving.

Metroplex made a mournful sound of hunger and longing that vibrated through Megatron's frame.

"This was recorded last cycle, at the Equatorial Vault. This cavern is the nexus of several others and extends for at least several thousand mechanometers in each direction." Megatron tapped a claw against the podium. "I REMEMBER that vault. I traveled through it several times, long, long ago. It was dry, bare, empty. Mined out for a million vorn. And now...." He gestured, eloquently. "You shall not starve, Metroplex. None of us shall. Cybertron lives."

The chamber hummed with disbelief. Hesitance. Hope.

Then pain. Pain and a low, slow anger. "I WILL NOT FIGHT FOR YOU, LORD HIGH PROTECTOR. NOR WILL I FIGHT FOR THE PRIME. NO MORE. I FOUGHT FOR YOU BOTH FOR VORN AND VORN. I SHELTERED YOUR FORCES. I SUPPORTED AND PROTECTED THEM. I FOUGHT AND BLED FOR THEIR SAFETY. ONLY TO SEE THEM DIE. ONLY TO SEE THOSE I SHELTERED HUNTED DOWN AND KILLED IN MY HALLS. ONLY TO SEE THEIR MURDERERS BECOME THOSE I THEN MUST PROTECT. ONLY TO SEE THE ENTIRE CYCLE BEGIN AGAIN. NO MORE!" 

The anger built, a slow wave that Megatron did not need the Matrix to feel. It shivered through Metroplex's electromagnetics like a storm on the horizon. For a cityformer--a mecha whose spark had been chosen specifically for its obedient nature, for its utterly placid temperament--such an outburst was unheard of.

It was also entirely justified.

Metroplex's coding had been written long before the Great War, when none could fathom the idea of a Prime and a Lord Protector divided. And so the codecrafters had given Metroplex unwavering loyalty...to both of them. Metroplex's creators had not foreseen the conflict that would cause, should the Prime and the Lord Protector go to war with each other. 

There had been discussion, when the Decepticons had first assaulted Section 1139. Would Metroplex rise? Would he fight to the death? What casualties could be expected? It had been Soundwave who had suggested that Megatron lead the assault and order Metroplex to surrender. It had worked then and every other time the cityformer's position had been contested. Direct, personal orders from Prime or Megatron tripped Metroplex's innermost coding, and he would follow, or fight, or fall at their command. 

It had done either side little good. Metroplex had become a position of last resort, as either side's command of him could be disrupted simply by Megatron or Optimus showing up to order it so. Both armies saw Metroplex as untrustworthy, and it became difficult to station troops there with any regularity. Megatron himself had quickly begun to see the tug of war for the cityformer as a waste of time, especially once the energon shortage grew to the point where Metroplex could not maintain his bipedal form or his larger weapons arrays. The war had moved on, and Megatron had assumed the cityformer dead along with the majority of the Autobots (and Decepticons) on Cybertron.

"That is your right," Megatron answered. Metroplex would not be the first to reject Decepticon authority on Cybertron. There were those who had remained (or been left) behind when the Ark and Nemesis had launched. Their numbers had no doubt dwindled over the years, leaving only the luckiest, most resourceful, and most ruthless. A few had approached the returning Decepticons with requests or threats or demands. Some feared competition for the scant resources remaining. Some appeared to want to be left alone. Once Decepticon reconnaisance had marked them as no threat, Megatron had largely ignored them. Currently, the Decepticons had their optics on larger prizes than any of the small survivor bands could manage.

Megatron's hand slashed through the air. "You will find no apologies here. I do not apologize for my decisions any more now than I ever did. There are, however, decisions that I regret, and it is those that I now seek to right. You may aid in that...or not. I will not order you, Metroplex. This must be your decision." Megatron took in the spark crystal in front of him. "If you wish it, I can grant you peace. Of the immediate variety, or we can return you to stasis and let time continue to take its course. Or you can aid us. The choice is yours."

For a long moment, there was only the living silence of machinery ticking away to itself. "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, MEGATRON? IF YOU WERE USED AND ABANDONED BY THOSE WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO LEAD YOU? IF ONE OF THEM CAME TO YOU AND ASKED FOR YOUR SERVICE YET AGAIN, WHEN YOU WERE NEAR DEATH?"

"I would refuse," Megatron answered steadily. "I would refuse and possibly kill him and take his place, as obviously he is unfit for command."

"AND ARE YOU, MEGATRON? ARE YOU UNFIT FOR COMMAND?"

"Perhaps. But there are none left with the strength and will to challenge me."

"NONE? HAVE YOU WON, THEN? WHERE IS THE PRIME, MEGATRON?" 

"The PRIME," Megatron said, his glyphs wry, "is currently on an organic mudball halfway across the universe because he is a sentimental GLITCH."

"I DO NOT UNDERSTAND."

"Neither do I. The planet should be razed along with its disgusting inhabitants, in my opinion." Weariness dragged at Megatron's struts. The last few cycles had been more circuit booster than recharge. "The war is over, for now."

"A TREATY?" That was definitely hope in the titan's glyphs.

"Of a sort. Prime is on Earth with his pet organics. I am here, rebuilding Cybertron. We are...continuing negotiations from afar." An arrangement which was working better than Megatron would have expected. Half a universe was evidently the perfect distance for them.

The information, evidently, made Metroplex re-evaluate his demand to be left to die. "...WHAT IS IT YOU WANT FROM ME, MEGATRON?"

"Rebuilding Cybertron is our top priority. On that Prime and I agree. Lend your aid, in whatever capacity you can. When I sent my mechs here, I assumed that you were offline. Their orders were to reclaim your structure as an outpost. You are situated in a reasonable location to act as a waystation to the Equatorial Vaults, as you did long ago. Fulfill your function, that is all I ask."

"MY TANKS WILL NEED TO BE FILLED TO 25.98% CAPACITY BEFORE I CAN DEPLOY MY REFINERY." 

Megatron's processor froze in the middle of logistical calculations. "Of c--what?"

"MY REFINERY." Metroplex's glyphs were inscrutable, blurred with bitter amusement. "I WAS NO MERE WAYSTATION, MEGATRON. I PROCESSED GIGAQUATS OF ENERGON PER CYCLE FOR KILOVORN BEFORE YOU WERE KINDLED."

Megatron had not known that. He commed Hook with this new information, and Hook sent him an incomprehensible blurt of surprised profanity. ::That's impossible. That is not in his specification files! ...wait. That's....:: The Constructicon sent sharp machine short-hand for _processing_ for a long moment. ::FRAGGING HELL. His blueprints have been corrupted. I can see where it should be, now that I'm looking for it. I'll have to verify the equipment actually exists. Deep scan, if it's folded into his internals the way he says.:: 

::Do it,:: Megatron replied.

Megatron could hear Metroplex's frown. "YOU WERE INFORMED OF THIS."

Megatron cocked his helm, his glyphs shaded with doubt and surprise. "Was I?" 

The monitor flipped from the video of the Vault to...what looked like security footage of a corridor. Megatron watched, perplexed, as a mech he did not recognize walked through the camera's field of view. "--history, of course. Metroplex is not fully self-sufficient, but given a steady supply of raw energon, he has the capacity to refine raw energon not only to meet his own needs and those of his inhabitants but also for significant export--"

Megatron stared, his optics caught by the familiar-but-not red frame strolling casually behind the tour guide. Optimus Prime's optics were politely on the speaking mech, not looking at the camera. His frame was as it had been before the war: tall and streamlined, his bulk due to integrated scientific equipment rather than armor plating, integrated weapons, or the ugly kibble his Earth form required. The Prime had had no capacity for war, then, because that was not his function. War had been the function of the mech who walked behind him.

Megatron watched himself stride onto the screen, following at a distance and pace that was more distracted than deferential. He also looked as he'd not in vorn and vorn: bright-plated and new, powerful and whole and unaware of how to be anything else. 

"YOUR FIRST TOUR OF MY STRUCTURE, WHEN YOU AND THE PRIME ASCENDED. MY COMMANDER MENTIONED THIS CAPABILITY."

Megatron watched first the guide, then Prime, then himself walk off the screen. 

He did not remember. He certainly did not remember the base commander's words. He likely had not even been paying attention. He barely remembered a long stretch of travel after their ascension as the new Prime and Lord High Protector. Ostensibly it had been to familiarize them with their subjects and their territories. In reality, they had both demanded it as a way to get out of the capital and see something besides the handlers and teachers that had shuttled them through their training (a few of which had ended up accompanying them, and, yes, there was Alpha Trion and Ataxis coming along the corridor behind them).

Megatron scoured his memorybanks, unarchiving what memories had survived through the long vorn. He had lost some of them to the corruption of time, to injury, to deliberate deletion to make room for weapons tech programming and tactical information. The timestamp on Metroplex's security footage matched none of Megatron's memories. He had, at some point, deemed them irrlevant and allowed them to be overwritten. He remembered an energon lake, two cycles later, and an enforcer outpost the cycle before, but not Metroplex himself. He remembered the entire trip as fairly boring except for the novelty of being outside the capital, of seeing new places. Of being able to spend time alone with his Prime in the evenings, a luxury that they had not had often during their training. Megatron terminated a memory-thread of one of those evenings before it could play.

"MEGATRON?"

"You...are correct, Metroplex." Megatron found himself watching as the security feed looped, his optics following two mechs he had not seen in a very long time. "I had forgotten. One of many bits of information that was...lost to time."

"HMMPH." The cityformer's reply was almost grumpy, and Megatron found himself presented promptly with a neatly-compiled package of footage and information. All the files were datestamped as the missing days in Megatron's own memories. "PERHAPS THIS WILL HELP YOU REMEMBER."

_Pushy fragger,_ Megatron thought.

Then Hook commed him with more swearing and preliminary scans indicating that he was 90% sure that Metroplex's refineries were still operational, if they could just get the equipment transformed out and cleaned up. Megatron brought Thundercracker and Payload in on the conversation, setting them to contacting Hardrock and determining how to get the raw energon from the vaults to Metroplex.

Megatron tucked away the packet of files in his memorybanks.

*************

Several cycles later, when the alignment was favorable, Megatron initiated a long-range communication to Earth. He included a progress report, an update on the Vault, and news of Metroplex. Prime, as expected, was overjoyed. "The Vault itself is a miracle. Metroplex as well is wonderful news. Did he seem...well?" The glyph Optimus used encompassed many different kinds of health.

Megatron leaned back in his "chair", a coincidentally comfortable slab of collapsed building that happened to face Earth. "He seemed starved and justifiably irate about being a pawn in the war, and I doubt that either of us are his favorite mechs right now, but he seemed...rational. Reasonable. Thundercracker has taken over as his ad hoc base commander, and I have not heard any complaints from either side."

"Good." Optimus' voice was thick with relief, then hardened with purpose. "We should alter Metroplex's programming. His and any others like his. It is inhumane to leave him unable to make his own decisions."

Megatron narrowed his optics at Optimus, across the vastness of space. "Is that wise? Now, of all times? Need I remind you how critical he could be to reviving Cybertron? We have no other refineries online that come even close to matching his capacity."

"I do not care." The audio-only channel carried the finality in Optimus' glyphs and voice. "We cannot continue to take advantage of mechs who were built for our convenience rather than their own self-determination. Now that we are at peace, I refuse to sanction keeping mechs in such servitude."

Megatron tipped a bit of rubble over with one finger and watched it roll down the pile and across the ground before fetching up against a fallen girder. "I did not ORDER him to do anything, if that eases your mind. He agreed to aid us. I left it at that."

"Ah. Good."

Megatron did not reply. He hesitated, his meta hovering over the command to terminate the line. Instead, he sent, "The Vault is all but cut off from the surface. The pipelines that used to transport liquid energon have been destroyed. The roads are not much better, and we will need to clear them, likely rebuild a bridge or two, and that's before the mining even begins. The Vault is valuable, but without refinement it might as well be dead metal. The Constructicons are already yammering at me for servos to help build infrastructure."

Optimus paused, and the uncertainty in his voice rankled Megatron like a burr in his plating. "I...see. Do you...need aid?"

Megatron stood, fragments of his seat knocked askew with the sharp movement. He strode back and forth across the open space. "What I NEED is more mechs! Autobot, Decepticon, Neutral, I care not, so long as they can follow orders. All the better if they are heavy haulers or can read Scrapper's engineering shorthand or organize worth a damn. I am rebuilding Cybertron with half a regiment and a cohort of surly architectural engineers, here, Prime!"

There was a pause. A very loud pause filled with things that Megatron was still too proud to say, too proud to demand or ask for. Not after so long. 

And so he did not. He stared, deep into the Cybertronian sky, toward one particular star that he had once attempted to eradicate, and the silence grew.

Just when Megatron was ready to snarl and cut the connection, Optimus' voice replied, "Is it time, Megatron?" His reference glyphs were very specific, pinpointing a particular conversation neither of them had forgotten. 

_When I do return to Cybertron, and when I do make things right, I will send for you and yours. And we will join and be one race again. A race of peace. We will once again have a home._

Megatron could only blame those words on the organic contamination of Earth and the wounds its disgusting inhabitants had inflicted upon him in the vorns he'd been held prisoner. "A race of peace." Such ridiculousness.

And yet, here he was. The call of Cybertron had been no fleeing fancy. And it had brought him back to a planet rich in energon, if only they could harvest it.

They did not need the Autobots. They did not need Prime. They had raw energon, and now they had a large-scale refinery. They had shelter from the no-longer-so-acid rains. They had raw materials. They had engineers. They had time.

But they were too few. They had no scientists and precious few medics to deal with the accumulated injuries and code-trauma of war. They had a great dearth of officers that could be trusted with important tasks, and all tasks were important now. They needed pedes on the ground, hands willing and able to work, and mechs with solutions to the problems that clogged Megatron's queues. Megatron's estimates had them limping along for another vorn at least with their current numbers, before any significant progress could be made. Surviving, certainly...but rather pathetically so.

"We need mechs. How many do you have, Prime?"

Optimus' reply was immediate. "Twenty on Earth. Another 275 in-system. Another 528 who have made contact via long-range transmission within the last planetary cycle."

"So few...." Megatron barely had more, stretched across Cybertron and known space. Once there had been hundreds of billions of Cybertronians living on Cybertron and even more on hundreds of colony worlds. Now there was but a handful. "Is this truly all that is left of us? I ask in all sincerity, Prime, I care not what your troop numbers are. Are there honestly less than 2000 of us left?"

Grey glyphs of regret. Loss. Mourning. "Those are the best estimates I have, Megatron. I...I have hope that there are more of us, scattered across the stars, hiding. But...it is only hope."

Megatron shuttered his optics. _Enough of this. Enough._ "If I sent for you and your Autobots, Prime, do you think we could all refrain from killing each other?"

There was a long pause, and in the end Optimus' reply was complicated with precisely modified glyphs for hope and regret, strategy and determination. "I have learned the folly of speaking for anyone but myself. But I will not kill you, Megatron, nor any Decepticon. My mechs...they want, above all, to go home, but fear that it will restart the war."

"I will personally kill any Decepticon that breaks the ceasefire," Megatron replied, his glyphs brooking no uncertainty. "I have made that clear."

"And do you think that that will be enough?"

"Given that my Decepticons are busy repairing and fueling one of your largest and most powerful Autobots, apparently so." 

Optimus' chuckle filtered down through the stars, followed by a sigh. "So.... Shall we try this again, my brother?"

Again. With so much death and pain behind and between them. And with so much more at stake. But then Megatron had never shied away from the difficult fights.

"Yes. Come home...brother."

\--end transmission--


End file.
